A
Lewis & Clark Law School scholarship
fund seeking to perpetuate the values embraced by Candise DuBoff Jones,
a 1977 graduate. The scholarship is awarded to to second and third year
Law School students who have a passion for the law, financial need, scholarly
achievement and a demonstrated commitment to his or her school, profession
and community.

A sculpture called Dream Court, commissioned to honor Candise DuBoff Jones, was presented to Brooklyn Law School. An article from BLS Law Notes describes this amazing sculpture and its recent dedication.

On
February 13, 1979, Candise DuBoff Jones, an Oregon attorney who had graduated
from Lewis and Clark Law School in 1977, was shot to death in the Multnomah
County Courthouse by the estranged husband of one of her clients. Ms. DuBoff
Jones was 26 years old when she was killed.

Shortly
after this tragedy, her friends and family established a restricted trust
fund for the purpose of providing scholarships for law students. The fund,
known as the Candise DuBoff Jones Memorial Fund, was to be administered
by an independent board and the scholarships were to be based on merit
and financial need and granted in the name of Ms. DuBoff Jones. Only interest
from the fund, not the principal, was to be used, and there was to be
a periodic accounting to the independent board.

A
restricted account was established at Lewis & Clark College in 1979
and many donations were deposited into that account. Articles were published
in, among other publications, the State Bar Bulletin, as late as 1984
for purposes of alerting interested parties to the request for donations.

In
August 1988, Ms. DuBoff Jones brother Leonard DuBoff, who was a
professor at the law school, raised questions with then dean Steven Kanter
about how scholarship recipients were selected. Apparently, the independent
board had never been formed and indeed, some of the income from the Candise
DuBoff Jones Memorial Fund had been misused, possibly funding other scholarships
at the law school or even misappropriated by the law school or college
administrators.

Mr.
DuBoff began to research issues surrounding the scholarship fund, including
a determination of how much had been donated and the actual disposition
of the funds. As part of that investigation, in January 1996, Mr. DuBoff
wrote the colleges attorney, Charles Hinkle of the Stoel Rives law
firm, seeking additional information about the fund. No adequate response
was received and Mr. DuBoff once again sought the requested information.
Although the scholarship had been awarded in 1987, 1988 and again in 1991,
it did not appear that the scholarship had been awarded since. Nor was
the scholarship mentioned on the law school's listing of scholarships
and awards and the earlier scholarship grants did not comply with the
terms of the scholarship arrangement. Mr. DuBoff then contacted the Oregon
Attorney General's office about this matter.

During
the course of the investigation by the attorney generals office,
the law school admitted that in March 1991 it abolished several restricted
funds, including the one held in the name of Candise DuBoff Jones, depositing
the money from those funds into the Colleges unrestricted endowment.
Neither Mr. DuBoff nor any other donor was informed of this improper commingling
and breach of trust. On several occasions, money from the fund, as well
as from the unrestricted fund into which the DuBoff Jones memorial restricted
funds were deposited, was disbursed, and neither Mr. DuBoff nor any other
donor of these restricted funds was advised of these improper disbursals.

This
was particularly troubling to the DuBoff family since, in 2003, the then
president of Lewis & Clark College, Michael Mooney, was
investigated for and ultimately resigned over misuse of college funds,
namely making an unauthorized $10.5 million loan to an oil technology
company that he had a substantial personal investment in. The company
ultimately went bankrupt. Similarly, the dean who was head of the law
school during a portion of the time in question, Arthur Lafrance, had
since been publicly reprimanded by the Oregon State Bar for unethical
conduct not related to the fund. He, too, resigned as Dean. After the
Oregon Attorney Generals Office's intervention, the college agreed to
reinstate the fund and scholarships were again offered for the 2004 -
2005 school year.